QUALITY JOURNALISM: VACCINE AGAINST SELF-DESTRUCTION

SPECIAL ISSUE OF YEREVAN PRESS CLUB WEEKLY NEWSLETTER The recent wave of incredible rumors regarding the reasons for the technicalpause in the broadcasting of Armenian TV channels came to stress once morethe depth of the crises that the information domain of our country founditself in. If one recalls the earlier panic over the expected destructiveearthquake, the series of vilifying articles on our well-known compatriotsthat gains more and more pace and, finally, the unrivaled mayhem thatoccurred in media after the tragedy of March 1 last year and that was notduly assessed, the state of affairs looks quite alarming. What steps arebeing taken to respond to these challenges? Unusual activeness can be witnessed in the media legislation of Armenia.Incessantly ideas and draft laws appear, and their authors wage loudpromotion campaigns, expressing their concern over the freedom, accuracy,ethics of the Armenian journalism and endorsing various kinds of limits tothis profession. And while the lawmaking agenda that existed before wasshaped by the international commitments of the country, the presentinitiatives are of purely local origin. The Armenian media do experience quite hard times with regard to followingthe written and unwritten ethical norms. But the main reason for that is notthat journalists themselves are viciously evading professional standards. Wehave got to this point primarily due to a consistent policy that, along withthe tough legacy of the Soviet times and objective economic hardships,resulted in the restriction of media independence as an entrepreneurialactivity and simultaneously an essential civil institute.Repressions against those who disobey, marginalization of media accompaniedtheir development throughout the whole post-Soviet period and left hardlyany choice other than becoming an appendix to the power, political,oligarchic clans or to move into entertainment business. And people who had been watching indifferently the illusions of freeexpression, editorial independence and social responsibility burn out in theminds of our colleagues, these very people today have taken the way ofteaching the media representatives how to behave. It turns out that theinformation terror, imposed on media against political opponents, accountsettling and criminal skirmish among those at power are to be fought with byfinancial sanction and a legal stipulation of rights and responsibilities ofjournalists! Is it not clear that stricter legal control of ordinary hired implementerswill not stop those who manipulate the press solely for waging PR-campaignsof different color? Should the demand continue, there will be enoughinformation kamikaze killers that will neglect the risk of being brought tocourt for the well-paid libel, insult, compromising materials. The selectiveapplication of law, traditional for our judicial system, will only clear upthe field from courageous journalists, guided not by order, but byprofessional conscience instead, will probably keep the tongues ofopposition media, too. The role of our media in public and politicalprocesses, modest as it is, due to such reforms will be minimized. And ofcourse they will not become more ethical and respectful of citizens' rights.The contrary is more likely. This does not mean at all that the author of this piece advocates legalimpunity for journalists. Every citizen must have a right to protect theirhonor and dignity from unconscientious media behavior. The RA legislation inforce does propose certain mechanisms for that. The fact that the victims ofdefamation seldom use these mechanisms because of mistrust in courts isanother issue. This statement does not of course refer to the uppernoblehood - the recent judicial practice, in particular, the suit of LevonKocharian, the son of the Second President of the country, versus "HaykakanZhamanak" daily is enough to see: these people can be quite effective inrealizing their discontent with media. The alarm over the present lawmaking fever does not mean that the laws havenothing to change either. The process of improving our media legislationmust be consistent and constant. But this must occur truly for the sake ofimprovement, not for the sake of imitation or retreat as it is the case withthe proposed amendments to the RA Law "On Mass Communication". Severalmonths ago their initiator, deputy of the RA National Assembly ViktorDallakian invited journalists to discuss his draft. Having heard thecriticism he promised to give up the initiatives yet shortly afterwards heput it into circulation in a slightly modified version. This is not the only surprise from the legislators. Along with the completenegligence of the numerous proposals of journalistic associations, thespecialized parliamentary commission was unusually ardent in supporting asomewhat queer draft of the Media Law Institute on amendments to the CivilCode, proposing stronger sanctions of journalists for damaging the honor anddignity of citizens. And while the initiative of Viktor Dallakian isrelatively harmless, since it cannot have practical application and is onlyundesirable conceptually, the proposed changes in the Civil Code constitutereal danger for the freedom of press. Despite the quite critical response tothis draft it reached the table of Venice Commission experts with the speedof light, and only their strongly negative opinion seems to have cooled theardor of the new advocates of "responsible journalism". The active lobbying of questionable initiatives occurs against thebackground of indifference that their authors have with regard to thedead-end that the broadcast legislation found itself in, the complete messin the legal regulation of advertising. Composing, reading with seriousfaces, editing, translating into English of the poor-quality draft lawstakes quite a portion of our statesmen's working time and quite a portion ofstate money, too. To say nothing of the cost of Strasbourg experts statingthe obvious fact - these initiatives are not up to the most basicinternational norms. All this could have been avoided through therehabilitation of the experience, usual in late 1990s and early 2000s, whenthe legislative concepts and initiatives were broadly discussed. Thisexperience was later abandoned, although the consideration of variousopinions and approaches would allow dismissing the most unacceptable ideasand to send documents of at least minimal quality to the assessment ofinternational organizations. The recent developments prompt the idea that the diverse discussion, thepublic checkup of legislative initiatives is now viewed by their authors asunnecessary obstruction on the way of pushing forward legislative garbage.When in September last year it was necessary to prevent new broadcastlicensing competitions from being held within days, amendment to the RA Law"On Television and Radio" was adopted with no public debate or assessment.The absurd justification given to that amendment still strikes even therichest of imagination. In the case of amendments in the same Law, adopted by the parliament in lateApril 2009, another method was used: the Council of Europe partners werebeing exhausted for years on end, and the contacts with them were maintainedin maximum confidentiality. As a result, bypassing the obvious solutions andadvancing instead complicated and stillborn mechanisms, the Armenianlegislators responsible for this "process" drove the CoE experts to utmostfatigue to get a relatively positive assessment from them. The same methods could be applied in the case of two drafts that promptedthis note. The involvement of certain NGOs in these imitational process,gives rise to both suspicions of these NGOs being partial and of financialsupport (possibly, expected) to these legislative initiatives, coming frominternational donor organizations, since many of them seem to havecompletely and hopelessly confused in the do's and don'ts in the case ofArmenian media. All these short-sighted conformist games with legislation occur in asituation when Armenian media are facing the real danger of getting seriousviral infections. One of them - the destruction of all moral taboos, ideals,values, reputations - is spreading particularly fast. Almost everyone speaksabout this and quite often, too, yet the vaccines proposed - to ban, torestrict, to punish - will hardly stop the epidemic. The unimaginablerumors, blackbites of those who dared to go against you in a certain way -these human features are displayed on every level of human communication,also media. And everyone knows the end and the transformation of allattempts to violently improve this nature, to purify it from such"weaknesses". In order not to become a hostage to primitive rumors the must beable to differentiate between what is true and what is purely exciting. Therumors from the marketplace do cause a much greater upsurge of adrenalinthan an article in a scientific encyclopedia. But when one needs knowledgethat determines a lot in his life, he would most probably resort to a boringbut a truthful source. Tabloids and paparazzi are prosperous in allcountries with developed media. They are scorned and disapproved of, butnobody thinks they should be exterminated. The existence of quality,responsible media with much editorial independence alongside with thelow-profile journalism protects the citizens from ignorance, hypnoticalpropaganda, loss of values. It is here and not in the existence of "yellow"press that we have a problem. Let us strain our memory and use our fingers to count the number ofnewspapers, TV and radio channels that are real alternative to those whopour dirt at everyone and everything, with an extremely biasedinterpretation of life around. Even with a most benevolent attitude towardsour media landscape one hand would quite suffice for this exercise. Untilrecently we comforted ourselves saying that the lack of objectivism ispartially compensated by the diversity of our print media, and that peoplewho regularly follow several newspapers of various directions have a chanceto get a more or less balanced picture of current affairs. Unfortunately,today the optimism for such arguments keeps decreasing. The strengtheningpolitical, material, social polarization of the conditions notdiffering views on the same facts but rather almost complete negligence offacts for the sake of preconceived assessments and categorical display ofattitudes. In this struggle for moral destruction of the opponent - actually,self-destruction - there can be no winners, the victim here is the spiritualand intellectual health of the . The only remedy here is theformation of a critical mass of media that offer quality information totheir audience to counterbalance the stereotypes, labels adjusted to narrowinterests, far from those of the public. It is very important, too, for themedia not to go far from the important issues of the day, to respond to allthe developments that concern people. Otherwise they are doomed to beshadowed by aggressive journalism for which the shot by the target selectedor assigned is the main sense and way of existence. It is the alternativeand not the naïve, or which are worse, quite intentional appeals toexterminate the irresponsible press that can stop this infection fromspreading around. The fulfillment of plans, cherished by some constructors of socialrelations, who hope to use the indignation at the journalistic "license" toapply, with public cheers, certain forms of censorship and repression, isthe worst case scenario. The further reform of the media legislation must bedirected not to fight the tabloids but to strengthen quality, professionaljournalism. The situation that our media found themselves in is close to an emergency.And in such case it is impossible to do without a concerned involvement ofauthorities. Particularly in Armenia, when the most influential informationchannel, the television, is almost fully controlled by the state. And whenthe powerful television resource is used the way it was in March 2008, toattain the petty objectives of the day, it is hard to avoid the drop in themedia morals taking place today and causing so much alarm. Why not learn alesson from this and not to offer such a professional standard to the that would enable pushing the debate on the important issues into acivilized format? Why not take the risk of giving up thematic and personalrestrictions at least on one or two leading TV channels, to create a trulyfree tribune that would disarm the stone and egg throwers from behind thecorner and barricades? For the danger of ultimate loss of media as aconductor of national interest and ideals is much more dangerous forresponsible power than the refusal from a monopolist control over air. We would wish to address all political forces, at power and in opposition,all business people, having at least some regard for public benefit, with anappeal: do refrain from ordering to discredit opponents and competitors, andif you have influence over media, use it to stand for principles and not todestroy personalities. Such moratorium is simply vital to slow down therapid degradation of our press. With every new turn of overcoming the moral taboos the immunity weakens andthe threshold of disgust among the journalistic profession goes down. In2002 most of Armenian media, whatever the political preferences were,boycotted "Or" daily for trespassing the commonly accepted ethical norms.Nowadays such publications are taken much more calmly, with no collectiverevolt displayed. And the longer it takes us to make productivecounteractions, the more complicated the situation will be in future. Of course, efforts to create competitive alternatives to "yellow" press, themoratorium on ordered pieces will not purify the mass communications fromthose who love to disseminate and consume gossip, pseudo-compromisingmaterials, unnecessary details of celebrity private life. There is not pointin attempting to make the human kind sterile, to refuse it a right to haveidle curiosity, other "harmful" habits and information demands. But letthese demands be met without the involvement and encouragement by theauthorities, political parties and other institutes, called to form educatedand morally healthy . DISTANCING, counterbalancing those who are only interested in sensations andscandals with media who seek to provide quality and accurate information tothe audience is the precondition for the development of modern, civilizedmedia market. Since late 19th century the media self-regulation came to bethe most effective method for such differentiation. The responsiblejournalism defined ethical codes and other mechanisms of voluntarily publicaccountability, while the "yellow" press, as a rule, prefers not to berestricted by moral commitments. In Armenia the self-regulation systemstarted to be formed over two years ago, yet to this day a major part ofleading newspapers and broadcasters, claiming to be "quality media", are notinvolved in the process. The conclusions seem to be obvious - therepresentatives of both progovernmental and opposition business andpolitical elite that back them prefer to keep their hands untied and are notready to realize the consequences of neglecting professional standards formedia and the . ...How can one help doubting that the legislative initiatives allegedlyintended to make the journalists more responsible are truly directed to makeour information domain healthier? What other unpleasant transformationsshould our journalism go through for us to proceed to competent decisionsand specific actions from verbal expressions of concern and imitatedactiveness?

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